Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the novel’s treatment of wartime violence, homicide, and alcohol addiction.

“She put the whiskey on the counter.

Cushla, isn’t it? I’m Michael. Would you like one yourself? he said, closing his fingers around the tumbler.

The room looked better with him in it. Behind him, the shabby lanterns that were fixed to the walls were casting circles of warm light on the teak tables, and there was a squalid opulence about the jade-green tweed that upholstered the banquettes and stools.”

In a key moment for the plot and the themes of The Complexities of Relationships in a Divided Society and Navigating Ethical Dilemmas, Cushla and Michael meet for the first time. The meeting takes place in the pub owned by Cushla’s family, which serves as a major setting throughout the novel. Much of the story focuses on Cushla and the married Michael’s relationship and the ethical dilemmas they face as a result.

“There’s our Tommy, said Davy.

As he spoke, the others began closing in on his older brother. Tommy took a step away from them, but one boy raised his hands and pushed them into Tommy’s chest. He stumbled off the pavement and onto the road.”

Tommy’s introduction demonstrates the constant bullying he faces from his peers. Eventually, anti-Catholic discrimination leads him to join the IRA and kill Michael, but the boy in this scene is a far cry from the murderer he becomes by the novel’s end. This scene occurs the first time that Cushla drives Davy home. As the novel continues, Cushla’s involvement with the McGeowns has major implications for her and the rest of her family.

“It’s from an endearment. A chuisle mo chroí: the pulse of my heart. My da wouldn’t have known that. He got it from the John McCormack song.

The pulse of my heart. If anyone heard her.

I knew your father, he said. He was a beautiful man.

He was, she started to say, but his words had slayed her.”

The discussion of Cushla’s name helps to illuminate her characterization. Her late father named her, and she still experiences grief and loneliness from his death. As a result, Michael’s admiration for her father is deeply meaningful to her, as indicated by the powerful word choice that his praise of her father as “a beautiful man […] had slayed her.